«The Isle of the Eons»

[Константин Ф.]

Запощу-ка вот сюда.

У Говарда есть цикл из четырех стихотворений, связанный с сабжевым рассказом. Они посвящены божеству по имени Зукала, упомянотому в "Острове вечности".
Разгребая файлы со сканами журнала Weird Tales, совершенно неожиданно обнаружил одно из этих стихотворений там, где совсем не ожидал, в журнале за 1991 год.

Кагбэ:

ZUKALA'S LOVE SONG

Along the sky my chariot ran,
And the star-things ran before. I raced the breeze over star-lit seas
Till the very wind gave o'er; But my soul grew lone, and my heart grew sad,
Sad as the sighing sea, For there was never a girl or lad
To laugh in the skies with me.
I hid my wings in a scarlet cloak,
I lowered my burning eyes, And I went on foot with a lilting lute,
A beggar from the skies. I tuned my lute to a song of love,
I edged my song with mirth, And my feet drank deep of the waving grove
And deep of the dust of earth.
And maidens flung me silver coins,
And women praised my voice, And when dawn was past, I found at last
The rose-white girl of my choice. She flung me a rose when I sang to her,
And its roots sank in my breast; But oh, she flung me a deathly rose
When she put my love to jest.
I sang her songs like a dew drop's fall
And songs like a bugle peal; But her heart was cold, and the world grew old,
And the heart of me turned to steel. I rent to shreds my scarlet cloak,
I raised my terrible eyes, I spread my wings till they hid the sun,
And mounted again to the skies.
I left my scarlet cloak to he
Like a rift of blood on the sward, But I did not break the lute I bore,
For that was the soul of a bard. Then from the blue empirean deeps
Where Nothing conquers All,
I raised a hand to the tiny world
As a giant grasps a ball;

Then into the bowl I flung her soul,
And the stars in glittering dress Laughed, crowding in with their cosmic sin,
To jeer at her nakedness; For the golden plates that hid her breasts
And the silk that covered her loins I rent and flung to the trailing mist
As a drunkard scatters coins.
Blue and dim on the topaz rim
Where the silence drinks the night, Forgotten moons like crazy loons
Hovered into her sight; And out of the deep where shadows sleep
That never knew the sun, Strange eyes aflame, the dark stars came,
Whispering, one by one.
And with burning eyes that hid her thighs
As fire-flies cover a tree, They kissed her face in a hot embrace,
And she whimpered upon her knee. Then I swept the band with a jade-nailed hand,
And the slim of her waist I gripped, And the stars fell out of her hair like moths
And through my fingers slipped.
High on a lone sapphirean throne
I sat me down with a laugh, And in wild alarm she clung to my arm,
In fear she clutched at my staff. A million miles beneath her seat
Rippled the topaz seas, And there were stars below her feet
And moons between her knees.

— Robert E. Howard